You watch a sad film and get caught up in your emotions. You cry your eyes out at the dramatic plot — you feel sad for the characters if they suffer, or happy for them when they succeed. It is only when the movie is over that you realize that what you were watching is not real.
But why couldn't you accept that when you were so absorbed in the movie? It was reported in
Science Daily this week that scientists at Case Western Reserve University, US, discovered that people simply can not think emotionally and logically at the same time. Now scientists have found that thinking logically and emotionally are like the two ends of a seesaw (跷跷板) —when we're busy thinking emotionally, the part of the brain used for cold and hard analysis is suppressed (抑制). And it's also true the other way round.
To come to this conclusion, scientists gathered 45 people — men and women — to take brain scans as they solved different kinds of puzzles. Scientists found that when participants were doing a math problem, the region in their brain that is associated with logical thinking lit up, and when asked to make emotional decisions, the region for emotional thinking lit up. But the most interesting part is that when asked to solve problems that required both logical and emotional responses, the participants always used one of the regions at a time while the other one went dark.
However, people sometimes ended up using the wrong one. This explains why some people are good at solving complex math problems but have poor social skills and why even the smartest people get taken in by fake but touching stories.
12. The author mentions “watching movies” at the beginning        .
    A. to prove emotional thinking is the most powerful
    B. to introduce the research based on such kind of experience
    C. to show that we are easily moved by something that is not real
    D. to explain that sometimes we only use emotional thinking
13. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University proved          .
    A. logical thinking works differently from emotional thinking
    B. logical thinking functions more efficiently than emotional thinking
    C. logical thinking and emotional thinking take turns to work independently
    D. logical thinking and emotional thinking could work well at the same period
14. It can be inferred in Paragraph 2 that____.
    A. people can analyze their emotions logically
    B. the two ends of a seesaw can not work at the same time
    C. when thinking emotionally, people can not look at things logically
    D. when people are thinking, the brain can obtain an opposite function
15. What could be the best title for the passage?
    A. Don't cry over something unreal       B. Movies and Feelings
    C. To develop your logic well                 D. Your Heart vs. Your Mind
  12-15 BCCD